It's the end of the world as you know it – brought to you by a Gnome Mage with big balls of fire

Two things I hate about Wintergrasp

For once I am not bitching and moaning about my team mates, no I am bitching and moaning about Wintergrasp mechanics and WoW.

The picture above tells the story of my issue with WoW… I’ll come back to it, but meanwhile keep an eye on that picture.

Wintergrasp group mechanics.

Ok, quick check. Noticed any change in the picture? No, it’s OK, we will come back to it.

Wintergrasp can handle two three 40 man raids worth of bodies – 80 of them for those of you as mathematically challenged as I normally am.

Entering as group

If you make the mistake of entering the WG battle while in a group, that is your group. You are not in either of the 40 man raid groups.

You do not:

Get raid buffs

Appear in healing frames

Share in the kills etc.

To get into the raid group, you need to first drop your current group then either:

a) Plead for a raid leader to invite you -which probably won’t happen because they are kind of busy.

b) Leave the zone (easiest to hearth to Dalaran) and re-queue hoping that someone hasn’t taken your position in WG… Which probably won’t happen.

Entering solo

Ok, quick check. Noticed any change in the picture? No, it’s OK, we will come back to it.

If you remember to drop group, you will enter WG as a member of one of the two three 40 man raids. Of course they may not be 40 man raid groups, because there will be some that have entered (intentionally or not) as their own group.

The good news is:

You do get raid buffs

You do appear in healing frames

You do share in the kills etc.

FOR YOUR OWN RAID GROUP!

At 1st this might make sense and not seem a problem. It is a problem though if you are doing the right thing with the wrong people.

If you, like me, realize this and head south immediately when the battle begins, you will miss out on any of the HK etc at the keep. The ones that take you through Corporal and Lieutenant, giving you access to the siege engines (and 2 or 3 WG marks).

You may be excited at 1st to see lots of friendly bodies around the workshops killing unfriendly bodies.

Bring on the HKs!

Or not!

I have spent entire WG battles fighting side by side with my allies, destroying the Horde, destroying the towers.

Yet, not one honor kill for me!

You see these excellent allies weren’t in my raid group.

So no HKs

So no Lieutenant

So no Corporal

So only one WG Mark and less honor at the end of the battle

It’s worse if you stay as your own group, or as an individual… Then you only get your HKs.

A solution?

The solution is simple… Ignore raid rules for HK sharing in Wintergrasp. If we are there, we are allowed to be there (otherwise you get ported to Icecrown), so give us the rewards. Come on Blizz, you know you want to!

Moving Pictures

Noticed any change in the picture?

Ok, now I want you to think of that picture as a frapps’d version of me jumping from the WG graveyard. I’ve got slow fall on, so it’s a slow jump… might take a little while.. about 20 seconds give or take a few…

See any movement yet?

Of course not!
It’s a screenshot!

The thing is, if I was frappsing that jump it would look the same.

I have this problem a lot in WG. More often than not as I leave the graveyard. I don’t know why… I’d like it to stop… If it won’t stop then I’d like the next thing fixed.

I have to log!

Actually, I probably don’t need to log, I probably just need to wait 5 minutes for the server to tell the client I have DC’d.

Of course by then, WG will be over and I will get diddlysquat for my 20 minutes.

I have to log!

You know when you DC in an instance, or a raid, even in a battleground, quickly scramble for you authenticator (you do have one don’t you?) log back in and…

Everything is OK!

When you do this in WG, things aren’t OK… You left the battle, your place has been given to someone else.

I’m almost as sneaky as a rogue…

I dare say this is an exploit, but screw you, I just want what I deserve for all my efforts.

When you get booted… err ported… out of WG, you get ported to Icecrown, just behind the fortress.

Because you are outside WG, you can use your flying mount and return.

One of two things will happen:

You will be invited to join because some other sucker just DC’d, or

You will get ported back out again.

What you can do is fly right to the border of WG and Icecrown and do quick flybys into WG territory.

If you get a warning rather than an invite, quickly turn around and fly to Icecrown.

Continue to do this until either:

You get an invite, or

There are 10-15 seconds on the WG clock.

Either way you will be there for the end of the battle.

The battle in which that screenshot was taken, I had already reached Lieutenant before DC’ing. I maintained that rank each time I tried to ninja enter WG – Blizzard knew I should be there, but slammed the door in my face.

On my last ninja entry, the battle ended, we won (of course). I was given full credit based on my rank for the battle, plus….

I have never had time for the holiday events, until recently, so I noticed last night that I am still 2 years away from completing the Children’s Week Achievement.

One of the achievements I didn’t try last year was School of Hard Knocks.

So I am guessing it will depend on which end of the week I post… or maybe two posts, each with a completely different rant at each end of the week.

1) Why is it so hard to take the knocks?
2) I just want to knock their blocks off?

I will of course be using Cynwises (as always) awesome post. This one is on how to achieve the school of hard knocks & hopefully it will be great experience no matter which side of the achievement we are on.

Check it out here (whether you love PvP or Hate PvP, this is your Achievement guide)